Letters to the editor: April 3

Real conservatives have to like Lugar

Tough times and acute public frustration are seeing Sen. Richard Lugar receive a serious primary challenge from Richard Mourdock. Hoosiers need serious substantive leaders such as Lugar to address national challenges instead of policymaking amateurs such as Mourdock, who spout simplistic solutions without offering credible policymaking alternatives.

For instance, Mourdock favors abolishing the Commerce Department. This agency's responsibilities include conducting the decennial population census and critical economic research such as determining economic growth, weather forecasting, climatic and oceanic research including tsunami warning and response, patent and trademark approval, and promoting international trade. How does Mourdock propose the federal government address these issues? Does he favor transferring such responsibilities to other federal agencies, state governments, the private sector or governmental private-sector partnerships?

Mourdock also criticizes Lugar's support for earmarks. Many earmarks can justifiably be criticized as promoting wasteful spending and serving no constructive purpose. However, many earmarks also enhance the public good by creating high-quality jobs and enhancing state and national research and development.

Which Indiana earmarks does Mourdock propose eliminating and does he favor turning Congress' constitutionally derived power of the purse entirely to the executive branch? Would he favor repealing the more than $2.8 million Lugar transportation earmark that enabled Lafayette CityBus to purchasing hybrid buses in 2009? Even earmark critics such as Citizens Against Government Waste say earmarks represent less than 0.5 percent of federal spending.

Real conservatives favor substantive leaders such as Lugar instead of frivolous and simplistic amateurs to address national problems.

Bert Chapman

Lafayette

Not as simple as what's heard in a pew

While the objective of the March 31 J&C editorial ("It's simple, follow the Golden Rule") is laudable, its recommendations are based on rather shaky ground.

The Hartford Institute for Religion Research reports that only 40 percent of those polled said they went to a worship service the previous weekend, and studies using actual headcounts put that figure nearer 20 percent. So not that many of us are getting the message from this source.

One also wonders, given the results, whether the Sunday message is always as kind and loving as your writer would have us assume. As religion continues to wane in this country and around the world, we would be wise to base our policies on humanity's innate sense of morality and our care for one another without outside influences.

Our founding documents state that governments are established to meet the needs of the people, and our secular Constitution was created to do just that, without influence from the many religions that exist or may be invented.

Health care is a basic human need. The advance of science has made it possible for us to meet this need for all for the first time in history. But we can only accomplish this by putting aside external, divisive influences and focusing on it.

Gordon Clark

West Lafayette

Can there be justice in the media age?

We are all shocked and appalled by the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, but in this case I wonder if the national media has gone too far.

If indeed the Sanford (Fla.) Police Department forwarded the case to the prosecutor's office, and the prosecutor decides to file charges against George Zimmerman, how can Zimmerman possibly get a fair trial when the national media has taken it upon themselves to report every detail of the case?

Obviously, the Sanford police bungled the case, but perhaps it was not by their failure to arrest Zimmerman. Perhaps it was by not asking for gag orders that would keep information pertaining to the case from being released to every news organization in the country.

Suppose there are charges filed against Zimmerman. Where will he get a fair and unbiased trial? The judge may have to look for people living under rocks to find individuals who have not developed opinions of the case.

I am all for freedom of the press, but maybe we should reconsider how the media can actually disrupt our system of justice by sensationalizing events and revealing information that is better left inside the courtroom - at least until the trial is over. I believe Zimmerman committed a crime by shooting Martin, but I have been biased by media reporting of the events in question.

Guy Hainje

Lafayette

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Letters to the editor: April 3

Letters to the editor for Tuesday, April 3.Real conservatives have to like LugarTough times and acute public frustration are seeing Sen. Richard Lugar receive a serious primary challenge from Richard